Posts“What do you think about SEO in upcoming years? ”
The Hummingbird update was a redesign of the search index to allow more complex semantic style searches.
There is a good discussion on the new Semantic search here: Semantic Search Marketing & Structured Data - what is it?
But in reality, the Hummingbird update got rolled out, and who if anyone saw any change in their traffic/conversions? So we are talking about an evolving process, which to be fair for SEO, has been the trend since 2000.
SEO/SEM/Digital Marketing or just Marketing, call it what you may. The titles may change, the techniques and methods will change, but the object will remain the same. More targeted traffic and conversions.
How things will pan out with all seeing all knowing Knowledge Graph, we will have to wait and see. My gut feel is the big boys will start voting with their feet and we will start to see more competition.
Bing finally seems to be waking up. With partnerships with Facebook, Apple, and now big sites like Trip Advisor, maybe website owners will soon have a choice, removing Google dependence.
Once that happens, the mantle of power is handed back to siteowners, removing some of the harsher and continual changes and updates that we've seen over the last 2 years, some good, some not so good!
I think the future for SEO as we know it will be more focused with on site design, ensuring optimised pages, site speed, semantic markup etc, and less focused on traditional spammy link building, which isn't a bad thing!  It's that time of year again, wind down and over indulge 
Hopefully you all have your marketing plans and strategies worked out for 2014, so here's to a Happy Xmas, and all the very best from My Local Services and myself.
If you haven't seen this before, it is well worth a watch, THE DIGITAL STORY OF THE NATIVITY
Happy Chrimbo “So if you had a brochure site, 3 almost identical sites, but targeted at completely different countries, would Google look at that as negatively in any way? Would Google penalise you? ”
In an ideal world, all content is unique. In reality there is no issue having the same content served up to different audiences, ie different country level URLs.
Here's from the horses mouth..
“Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#3” For any fellow whiskey fans, this was an interesting story, the launch of The London Distillery Company.
I remember seeing this as a pitch on CrowdCube, a crowd sourcing investment website, and they got all of their funding last year.
What a fantastic business to get into, although a huge risk, as the first whiskey won't be ready for 3 years, so hope it tastes alright!
Apparently they have been granted the first single malt whiskey licence since the 1900's, and will be the only Whiskey producer in London.
I reckon we are looking at a success story here and wish I'd taken a punt on them. Oh well, best of luck to them and shall look forward to sampling it when it's ready!  “Do we have a list of UK business directories? ”
Trouble is, you then get spammy long lists of web directory rubbish 
With shameless bias, I'd have my selection as:
Us - obviously
uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk - professionally run by TJ
freeindex.co.uk - no brainer
Then you have a choice, there are the standard ones, thomsonlocal, scoot group, yell etc, but you might as well as sign up with 118information.co.uk who over time will propogate your details across 100's of directories. They also now own Thomsonlocal (or the parent company does, Market Location).
Next year, there will be a new option, which should make life a lot easier for UK small business owners, with a huge reach of millions of monthly local visitors. But its still in the planning stages, so watch this space! Shall tell more when I'm allowed Interesting idea, not with separate sites, but we do have a similarish set up.
We have a block of 100k 0843 numbers which we use to analyze our top performing free listings. We can run reports, analyze call numbers etc, and work out which categories are being indexed and currently ranked, as our 08's drop out if page views stop, and then get reused.
Although "not provided" hasn't helped, but with a bit of time, you can build a picture of what listings, and thus keywords are generating your traffic. Haven't utilised for PPC, as we only use PPC for business sign up stuff, and already have plenty of historical conversion data.
Sounds like quite a lot of work to set up, the proxy site idea, but the ideas sound. Not heard of it before, is this something you're doing? “interesting reading about people promoting unique high quality content, saying it is most important ”
The links debate will drag on for another 5 or so years before semantic techniques and structured data resign link building as we know it to the archives, and not a moment too soon. Assuming there are any sites left after the knowledge graph swallows all of our content.
The way I read it, which may or may not be right, is it's all about relevance. A high PR site which is no way shape or form is related to your site will generate less domain authority credit than a site with relevance.
Most of us have abused anchor text in the past, because that was the way to do it, and that's the problem. 99% of link building techniques have been abused, which is obvious, as links were the webs first currency. Articles, guest posting, comments, all abused.
I think the new generation of link building is content. Not the old worn content is king cliche, but targeted content for a relevant audience, in otherwords optimised link baiting. So full circle, back to where we started. Decent content encourages linking. But with smarter content aimed at being picked up on higher profile sites, and maybe even the chance of the odd viral.
Thats my theory and plan for 2014. Shall report back this time next year and let you know if it was cobblers or not “Interesting how SEO is labelled as 'free' ! IF I paid myself minimum wage and counted the amount of hours it spent on SEO, the number would be huge. But the only investment is time, not moeny - so correct. ”
Your absolutely right, time is money unless you work for buttons. I guess a better way of putting it would have been once the investment in SEO has been made, then you can generate free traffic.
“SEO once done (or ongoing) will generate free (organic) traffic, but unless you are savvy yourself, then there is the cost to have this implemented. ”
But agree with you 100% on PPC. Used it for years and still swear by it because it consistently works. Instant results marketing, with instant analytics, allowing you to make changes to a campaign on the fly, whats not to like.
Although interestingly have seen a slow down of spend and conversions ever since Google were forced to put a big obvious bright orange sponsor ad button next to the adwords unit, a couple of weeks ago, which bizarrely seem to have disappeared again, after just having a quick look!  I really do like Robert Preston's (Business Editor at the Beeb) style of writing, prob why I quote him so much.
But he's done a fascinating analysis of the expected 2014 recovery. Or is it?
BBC News - How fragile is the 2014 recovery?
So are we on the way back up, and business as usual for everyone, or are times still challenging?
I'm cautiously optimistic looking at our stats, small businesses genuinely seem to be spending more, which is a good sign, but nothing earth shattering, so I'm hoping for a continual growth through 2014, rather than expecting it.
What's anyone else's take. Is business booming and you've employed an extra 20 people, are things ticking over nicely, or is it still cautious times out there? All sounds very interesting. So when is all this going to happen and you can tell us more?
...and best of luck
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